by Stephen Biro
It took me ten years to write this book. Five years were research of psychology and theology. I couldn’t write about this without a basic understanding of my mind and of God and of what actually happened to me. I spent another five years writing screenplays and short stories to hone my writing.
I don’t know why I was given this opportunity, why I was taken to the other side. I do know that what I experienced, including the final outcome, follows total Biblical expectations.
If ever I do a book signing and you meet me in person, all you have to do is ask me what I honestly know and believe. I might laugh and I might even cry. But I will look you in the eye and I will tell you, what I am telling you now:
There is a God and there is a Devil. The Bible is the living word of God, and there are more antichrists living among us then you could ever believe or even truly understand.
I know what I am writing, and I accept full responsibility for it.
If you want to get the appropriate atmosphere for the next part of my story, I suggest you watch Constantine (starring Keanu Reeves) or Jacob’s Ladder (starring Tim Robbins).
This is your optional homework if you want to fully enjoy what you’re getting into. For the rest, give it a day and then come back to me. Step through the looking glass and fall down the rabbit hole, swallow the pill, and redeem your golden ticket.
STEP INTO THE ETHER WITH ME
We find ourselves in a white-tiled room. No furniture, no music, just the two of us. I look deep into your eyes and ask, “Are you ready?”
You look at me in total confusion as two chairs materialize in the middle of the room. I motion for you to sit.
As you slowly sit, end tables slowly emerge from the somewhere. They pulsate and come forth from nothing. I sit down and swoop up the drink that was on my table, bringing it to my lips and knocking it back as if it was water. You look at your end table for something next to you, something to make you feel better. It could be anything: chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes or even a teddy bear. It’s what you need at this point, and you get it. It consoles you, makes you feel at ease. And it’s right there.
Everything you want is there, and you grab it. I smile as we both realize that we all have our vices. I have mine right now, so why shouldn’t you have yours?
I look into your eyes and stare for a moment. It’s uncomfortable, but I need to make contact. I need to let you know it’s okay—you might not believe everything I say, and that’s all right.
“We all have choices in life,” I say, “And we hear from many, many false prophets and charlatans. Sometimes we don’t know where to stand, what to think or believe. But I do.”
As I stand, the white-tiled room seems to fluctuate, as if breathing on its own.
I begin to pace, unsure of how to proceed, before returning to the chair.
“I’m not a prophet, and I’m not holy. I’m just a human trying to make the best of this. I make massive mistakes as well. I’m actually more of a mess then you ever could be.”
You’re still confused.
“You ready for the rest?” I ask. “I’ll go faster now because it’s needed. You know most of my early life, and the rest is just water under the bridge.”
You shake your head yes. You expect I would be smiling, but it’s more of a frown. I take another swig of my drink and lean forward to put my elbows on my knees. I continue with another necessary part—the drug part—of my history:
In ninth grade in Florida, I had my share of bullies and girlfriends, and I learned more about life. But it seemed less about living and more about survival and fitting in to get by. Mom got back with my stepfather but ended up splitting again. I learned the fun of drugs and partying during the divorce (and didn’t realize the attending problems with those activities until decades later).
My sister stole things and partied same as I did, but she got caught. I was rather good at hiding my unlawful activities. Mom couldn’t handle it, so she sent my sister to live with our biological father. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to her.
(My sister ended up graduating college and started a nice American life. Good job, nice house. But she was never happy. Having things, and things to do, does not make a person happy. It shows all across the world, especially in America.)
Anyway, I became a Head. That’s a person who did well in school but who realized school is bullshit. Drugs and sex became a part of my life as an escape; there was nothing better to do. It was party time, and I was partying.
The white tiles begin to fluctuate, changing color as I move around in my chair. My eyes cloud over, also white.
The room flashes around you, switching from white to black to gray, then back to white again. You look around, nervously realizing that our tiled room could be a great place for some wetwork. After all, you’re in a room with a madman who’s been drinking, and it would be easy for him to dismember your body into little pieces. Then he would just need to take a hose and spray your remains down the drain in the right-hand corner of the room. A spigot suddenly materializes on one of the walls, and a green hose loops itself around a stake in the wall. I turn to see the hose as the spigot turns itself on.
“What are you doing?” I ask. An axe suddenly appears next to my right hand.
“I knew you would figure this out,” I continue. “But not this fast.” I take another sip of my drink as the axe dissolves and the hose melts onto the floor. Its liquid remnants begin flowing towards the drain.
“Stop that. I’m not your enemy, and I don’t want to kill you, even if it seems like it. We are both in the ether. We’re linking minds, and I’m trying to relate my experiences—not for my gain, but for yours.”
A pleading look crosses your eyes, and I smile.
“This place is a gateway. It makes real our memories, our thoughts, our dreams, our nightmares come true. We’re not here for your thoughts to run rampant; we’re here for my memories, so keep your mind to yourself.”
I finish my drink and the glass refills itself. Your drink changes color as it becomes the exact beverage you want it to be. You sip, and it’s perfectly satisfying.
“Understand now?”
You nod your head and chuckle.
“Good. I’ll tell you about a couple of my first times, because they were so fucked up. But they helped me realize there was something more to, say, LSD than just getting a buzz. So let’s go with my first LSD experience.”
The room shakes and shivers as the tiles broadcast my past:
Seventeen years old, I’m convinced to take LSD for the first time while hanging out with five high-school friends. My long hair is about five inches past my shoulders. I’m wearing a green army surplus jacket, and my jeans are methodically bleached in strips down my pant legs. I’m already stoned, and I’m being convinced by my friends to trip with them.
I took the blotter acid at David’s house. David was a funny, smart friend who was always the life of the party. He had short brown hair, and he was skinny.
We walked over to John’s house, right behind David’s. We went to his room, because John’s parents were at work. We smoked more pot in his bedroom.
The bedroom was decorated with pictures of metal bands taped to the walls. I reached over for a hit of a joint and took a big hit, holding it in.
Then, suddenly, one of the school deans bitched at me in the corner of the school’s left wing. Over 300 pounds in weight, she yelled at me in front of some friends. I tried explaining to her that it wasn’t my fault.
The school disappeared and I was surrounded by heavy metal posters again in John’s room. My friends were staring at me.
“Dude, are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?
David laughed, and the rest of my friends chuckled and snorted.
“Dude, you starting shaking and just said, ‘Ung, ung, unghhhh.’”
I laughed and told them I had suddenly found myself back at school, receiving the wrath of one of the deans.
“I’m glad
you didn’t meet some hot bitch wherever you went,” David said. “Because that would have made us uncomfortable.” We laughed more, and the joint was passed back to me.
I tripped the rest of the night with David and my friends and had one of the greatest times of my life. At the end of that get-together, I “ended up” with a ten-inch buck knife in my back pocket. And I “ended up” with some pot and a makeshift bowl (made out of a camera film case) in my front pocket. I didn’t know whose they were.
In the wee hours, David said, “Dude, you have to leave. My parents can’t find you here when they come back.” Still tripping balls, we both guffawed, until I said, “How do I get home?”
David brought me to the garage and pulled out a bike. We laughed like hyenas because it was a bike from the 1950s with two soft tires. I was laughing because I lived ten miles away down a major highway. David must’ve been laughing because the bike was the shittiest one he had. It was the foggy season in Florida, and the fog that night was pure purple. Jimi Hendrix came to my mind as his song subject floated all around us. We both stared at the willowy purple swirls chasing themselves around in front of us.
I hopped on the bike, laughed some more, and clumsily fell off it as if it were a new contraption I had never ridden before. I jumped back on the bike and rode into the purple fog. I still heard David laughing for two blocks, and then I was in purple alien territory, heading for the highway.
I was still tripping as the car headlights passed and the fog swirled before me. I made it to the highway, and as each frightening car appeared suddenly then zipped past, creatures and tornados swirled out of the foggy wakes. Sometimes I was lucky enough for a cute little animal to show itself in the gloom, while other apparitions seemed intent on dragging me to Hell.
I saw faint lights ahead from a convenience store. I peddled faster and harder, feeling that my life somehow depended on arriving there. I knew what I needed, and I needed it bad.
At the store, I entered and hoped the clerk didn’t realize I was out of my mind. I grabbed the biggest Charleston Chew I could find and a bag of Twizzlers and paid my $1.75 at the register without looking at the clerk’s morphing face.
Back on the bike and back in the fog, I peddled my ass towards home while munching my Charleston Chew. The Chew stuck to the roof of my mouth, and the more I ate, the more got stuck up there.
A squad car passed me and made a sudden U-turn in my direction. I reached into my mouth and desperately tried to dislodge the Charleston Chew as the cop flashed his lights and pulled me over. The overweight officer approached me, and I was panicking inside. It was my first major brush with the law, and I was tripping on LSD. I momentarily forgot my predicament when I noticed the flashing blue lights were twirling magically in the fog. They made me want to chase them, but I decided against it. A voice snapped me out of it.
“How you doing, son? Late at night to be on a bike ride, huh?”
“Mumble fumble frothem home.”
Oh my God! I couldn’t speak intelligibly because of the damn Charleston Chew. The cop looked me over and saw inside the front pocket of my army jacket. He reached for my pot and the bowl. He grabbed it and said, “What do we have here?”
Although I knew I could only speak like a retard, I made a decision and committed to it, knowing what I was about to say was total and utter bullshit.
“I juthed cominkth from a frienths housh and I’m bikthing home.”
“What about this pot?”
“The potsh and bowl—I shtole it from my sho-called friendsh becaushe I shought it wash cool. I just mooved here and became friendsh with people I shouldn’t hash, but I thoughts it was cool, sho I did.”
He scanned me up and down. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I gotsh into a fight with shem. That’s why I can’t shpeak normal, because my lipsh is bushted.”
He asked for my ID. I reached into my back pocket to produce it.
But I didn’t just find my ID. I also found that ten-inch buck knife. I reached around it and gave him the ID. He walked to his cruiser, and my mind freaked out hard.
Here I was, looking like a drughead with my army jacket and bleached jeans, lying to a cop, talking funny because of a sticky Charleston Chew, busted for pot I barely remembered I had, tripping on acid for the first time, freaked out by swirling purple fog, and discovering a ten-inch buck knife in my back pocket.
So what does a person do in a jam like this? Obvious: Make it worse.
I reached into my back pocket and slowly eased the knife out. I had only gotten it two inches out of the pocket when the cop returned to me. Maybe I felt shielded by the swirling violet fog; I kept slowly sliding the knife out of my pocket, even as the cop started talking to me.
“You know, you don’t have a record, and it looks like you moved here just recently.”
My fingers kept easing the knife out behind me when I realized I could get shot dead if the cop thought I was pulling a knife on him. But I went for broke and didn’t stop.
“I know what it’s like to try to fit in with a new crowd, but joining them in irresponsible behavior will only get you in trouble.”
The tip of the knife was almost freed from the pocket.
“You do sound like you got into a good fight.”
The knife was out! I held onto it, intending to drop it. I couldn’t believe I had been allowed to hold my hand out of sight all this time in the presence of a cop. I guess he didn’t consider me much of a threat. If only he knew I’d been lying to his face while brandishing a deadly weapon.
“This is what I am going to do, kid.”
With those words, I dropped the knife to the ground. I stepped back, onto the knife, covering it with my oversized feet. I maintained eye contact all the while, and Johnny Law didn’t seem to react at all.
Instead, he took my pipe and chucked it into the woods.
“You need to be more careful about picking friends. You already got your ass beat, and it could have been worse.”
He dumped my pot on the ground, shaking the baggy empty. I stepped harder on the knife. The fog’s demons swirled behind him and dripped venom from their fangs. I took a deep breath and thought he actually saw the true person inside of me, wanting to believe in the innocence of youth but knowing it could be occasionally corrupted.
“You need to get on that old bike of yours and get your ass home.”
He looked at me with smiling eyes, seeming to know everything I said was bullshit. I backed up, praying he didn’t see the knife.
“Thanksh, I mealy appweciate this ossifer.”
I rode the rest of the eight miles home like a bat out of Hell and didn’t think until I was in my home. I closed my door, careful not to wake Mom. I fell on my bed and gasped, my lungs working overtime to compensate for air I didn’t get while dealing with the cop.
I grabbed my Twizzlers and stared at them for the longest time. The room began to breathe as I opened my strawberry-flavored rubber and ate the most delicious, non-nutritional junk I have ever consumed. Eating those Twizzlers was like escaping from Alcatraz with a huge steak on the other side. It was one of the best feelings in my whole life.
I considered the night’s events: That cop was cool; if things had gone differently, I could have gotten possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of a concealed weapon and, for shits and giggles, attempted murder of a police officer. Hell, he could have even pinched me for curfew violation, public intoxication, or operating a bicycle against traffic. I was lucky, but to be honest, I couldn’t have talked my way out if it weren’t for the Charleston Chew and the LSD. I wouldn’t have been able to spin that nutty yarn if I weren’t stoned, tripping and candy-mouthed. It all worked out for the best, thank God.
The tiled walls shimmy as the white bleeds through my past and becomes the present. You look at me and smile. I smile too.
OUT OF THE TV AND OUT OF MY MIND
I sit in a red leather chair across from you. I’
m wearing faded jeans and a concert t-shirt, but you’re not familiar with the death metal band on the shirt. My face bears a slightly graying goatee and sharp brown eyes. We both smile, and our glasses next to our chairs fill with our favorite drinks.
I slide my fingers through my slowly thinning hair and I shake the dust of life out of it. I grab my drink, lift it and let it go. It floats in the air while I rub my hands against my pants, wiping the sweat off my palms. You chuckle.
“Are you ready?” you ask.
I smile unevenly. I snatch my drink out of the air, quickly bring it to my lips but stop before I drink.
“Yeah,” I say and take a sip. “Let’s do this.”
The nothingness takes form, and our chairs disappear. My old living room materializes around us, and we’re standing in the corner. It’s a one-bedroom apartment, filled with videotapes and VCRs. A nice, white-leather pit group, almost too large for the space, surrounds the small living room. The old me, er, younger me is sitting on the couch, tripping with a nitrous cracker in one hand and a punch balloon in the other. Music videos are playing on a TV in the immense white entertainment center. I’m wearing a ragged red t-shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. The room is dark except for the TV’s glow. It illuminates the form of what I used to be.
You look around and notice my current self is no longer with you. But my voice breaks in over this past vision:
“Don’t worry. I’m putting you alone in the situation so you can experience it with more focus. You’re completely safe. Just experience it.”
You watch my younger self take a nitrous cartridge out of a Whip It box and slide it into a metal something with a loud thunk. That metal something is a “cracker.” You take a nitrous cartridge that is used to make whip cream and you slide it in. And then you stick the punch balloon at the other end of the metal apparatus. You twist it slowly to break the seal while the nitrous gas from the cartridge quickly enters the balloon. You have to do it slowly, or you’ll break the balloon from the freezing cold of the gas.
